Making money from open source / free software

[Paul DiRezze]

At 12:06 AM 18/03/2004 -0500, you wrote:
> > That is a decent article, but the following does not ring
> > universally true to me:
> > "Open source is always a way of saving money, because
> > you can produce software at a lower cost," Marten Mickos,
> > CEO of MySQL, told the audience.
>
>You're quite right.
>
>Open source has nothing to do with "producing software at a lower cost."

I think it has a lot to do with reducing software development costs.

>It is quite likely that it is _more costly_ to produce "open source" 
>software.
>
>- It is mandatory that you start from scratch; you can't have the 
>"savings" of using proprietary software.

I don' think this is true.  There are hundreds (if not thousands) of open 
source libraries and other tools you can use to jump-start your development 
effort.  Additionally, you may have a significant portion of your product 
developed by volunteer coders for a greatly reduced cost.

>- And with "open source" software, you cannot assume that you will be able 
>to recoup your costs by selling licenses.
>
>The savings of cost comes in when it allows you to use software that 
>_someone else_ produced and not be expected to pay for it.  But that is 
>not a savings associated with _producing_ the software.

I think it is.  Whether it's me linking my code to an open source library 
and using open source tools to write my programs, I find many ways in which 
open source saves me money _producing_ software.

paul

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